The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Electronic documents may be protected. An electronic document may be accessible by use of a communications network (such as the Internet). The accessibility may be controlled, such as by controlling the capability to open, edit, save and/or print the electronic document, for example. Access to an electronic document may be controlled by applying a document control policy to the electronic document. A policy may comprise a set of document control rules that may define rights associated with an electronic document. The rights may include rights granted to particular users, such as the right to access, edit, save and/or print the electronic document. Additionally, the set of document control rules may include a list of users that may be granted the rights, and/or may include a set of restrictions on how and/or when one or more rules may apply to an electronic document.